Sinja Kuppers, Duke University
‘Servitude of love’ (servitium amoris) was a popular elegiac motif that Roman poets employed to impress their beloved by portraying themselves as slaves to them (see Szelest 1988, Menefee 1981, Copley 1947). However, this game of pretense (see McKarthy 1998: 472) becomes upended when a freeborn loves a slave – a relationship that was regarded as shameful (Ov., am. 2.7; Hor., carm. 2.4; Prop. 1.9; Catull. 6). In this paper, I use the fourth-century poet Ausonius, who wrote six epigrams on his slave-girl, to showcase his poetic struggles with expressing his love to a slave. I argue that Ausonius legitimized his love for Bissula by, on the one hand, constructing a Roman identity for her while, on the other hand, highlighting her otherness (barbarianness, slave status) to fulfill his audience's need to recognize social dependencies even in love poetry. Ausonius thus serves as a point of entry to a larger discussion on how Latin poetry encodes social, racial, and gender norms.
First, I discuss how Ausonius stereotypes Bissula by her language and barbarian origin. He ascribes to her a dual identity based on her speech and appearance: Her speech reveals her origin as a “daughter of the Rhine”, her beauty, however, characterizes her as Roman. I propose that Ausonius’ cultural constructions of Bissula were informed by a long tradition of stereotyping imported slaves: Aristotle Pol. 1.1252b suggested that “barbarian and slave are the same in nature”. In addition, as speaking with a foreign accent marked slaves from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea as barbarians in Classical and Hellenistic Greece so it marked slaves from Germania as barbarians in the Roman Empire (see Forsdyke 2021: 170). Ausonius demonstrates that notions of otherness were deeply rooted in ancient societies of enslavers, even permeating Latin love poetry.
Second, I propose that Ausonius attempts to legitimize his love by ascribing to Bissula a “Roman” beauty. This identification now allows him to rank her as more beautiful than Roman girls. In addition, he resorts to unusual means to reinforce her Romanness by calling Bissula a foster (alumna), i.e. a “quasi-kin” (see Sigismund-Nielsen 1999). The term foster was typically applied to freeborn foster children only (see Sigismund Nielsen 1999). Given that “[f]ostership ended with adulthood” (Setälä 1987: 15), alumna indicates that Bissula was a minor. I propose that identifying Bissula as a foster consequently complicates the relationship between foster father and ward (pupilla), master and slave, lover and beloved.
Overall, Bissula’s social dependency is co-constituted by Ausonius’ implication of superiority as a Roman, man, and slave master. In love poetry, the amator generally seeks to close the distance between himself and the beloved by pretending to be the beloved’s slave (see Pawlak 2018). Ausonius, by contrast, reaffirms his distance by qualifying his puella so as not to place a slave above a freeborn and a barbarian above Romans.
This paper will appeal to scholars interested in Latin love poetry, Roman history, ancient slavery, and late antiquity.